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Empires of the Indus — The Story of a River
Alice Albinia explores the river known to the Sanskrit scholars as the ‘unconquered Sindhu’. However, the river of rivers that flows through what is the motherland of Hinduism, is today neither unconquered nor close to the Hindus. Just as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Lal Krishna Advani was surprised to learn as Home Minister, a few years ago, that the river that flows through Leh and is known to the locals as Senge Tsampo, is the same river that is known as Indus to the modern man and Sindhu to the ancients, the reader too is in for a few surprises with reminders that are disconcerting. The heartland of Rigveda, the author reminds, has been left behind in Pakistan and that the great book is principally about Punjab, north-west Pakistan and east Afghanisatn. It mentions the sin cleansing Ganga but only twice and the Yamuna only a handful of times and the fabled Saraswati finds mention only in the ‘later layers of text’. In fact, even the name India is derived from Indus and in 1947, when we adopted that name, it was not only to signify continuity but also ‘appropriation of the past’. It is this Indus that is explored by the author through an unbelievable journey that takes her through the different civilisations, cultures and spiritual experiences that were moulded and influenced by the river of Indus. When, through the saints of the river, the composite culture of Sindh is brought out, one cannot but lament the loss and wonder at what could have been. As the journey moves upstream and reaches Punjab, the reader can deconstruct the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great and notice how he was brought down on his knees by the mighty rivers. The endurance demanded by the flooded rivers, boggy lands and debilitating heat proved too much for the conquerors of the world. However, the decline in the fortunes of the river began with Westerners mapping of the Indus. In 1635, the Englishmen had nothing to offer the Indians but were prepared to give hard silver for the Sindhi cloth. Even in 1831, the Indus was mapped only up to Attock, that is half of its length but once Sindh was conquered in 1843 begins the story of its damming by the British for colonising new areas for cultivation, of raising revenue through irrigation and the river’s gradual diminishing. With the Partition, the signing of the Indus Water Treaty and building of big dams, the ‘paradise encircling’ Sindhu that brought forth civilisations and species, languages and religions and was known in the ‘Atharaveda’ as ‘Saraansh’ — flowing for ever — is now in danger of being lost. The Sindhis bewail that through mankind’s folly of spending it and the overbearing Punjabi rulers of Pakistan, the eco system and life has been irretrievably damaged. Up in the mountains, closer to the origin of the great river, one comes face to face with the congregation of the four faiths — Bon, Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism — that have collectively enriched human life. The author travels beyond Mount Kailash or as the Tibetans call it, Kangri Rinpoche, to the source of the river and with the mission accomplished and having by then experienced the might and import of the Indus on human life and what is now being done to it, she is seized by the apprehension that once there are dry river beds and dust then ‘the songs humans sing will be dirges of bitterness and regret’. An immensely readable book that educates, provokes and also disturbs.
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ALICE
Albinia’s Empires of the Indus is not just a story of a river;
it is not even an adventure book that follows a river up stream and in
the process discovers various lands, people, their beliefs and customs.
It is much more than that as it opens the doors of consciousness, long
thought to be locked under the weight of hoary time. At another plane,
as the mighty river of the Vedas diminishes, it delivers a grim warning
to the people of the lands that witnessed the rise and fall of the
civilisation of Harappa and Mohenjodaro.